Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, fighting a $900 million restitution demand, claims her crimes were not proven to have caused her blood testing startup’s collapse, and her deceptions did not generate all the money investors poured into her firm.
Federal prosecutors last month filed a motion asking Judge Edward Davila to order Holmes, convicted in January 2022 of four counts of defrauding investors in her now-defunct Palo Alto startup, to pay $878 million in restitution. Davila sentenced Holmes in November to more than 11 years in prison, ordering her to start imprisonment April 27, a date she is battling to extend until her appeal concludes.
Holmes in a filing Friday in U.S. District Court in San Jose noted that Davila ruled in a January order that prosecutors had not established that Theranos collapsed because of Holmes’ criminal conduct. Holmes further claimed that the prosecution had not “shown that the investor-victims it identifies relied on the offense conduct when deciding to invest.”
